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Patrick Bongoy is known for working with disused rubber. This work is an example of how he is expanding what has largely been a very sculptural use of the material – fashioned around mannequins – into a 2d canvas. Bongoy has worked in this way so as to make an absent body, present. In this work, this presence of a body is summoned through the hair of the subject. The hard yet malleable material he uses to represent the human body is in reference to the hard and difficult conditions in his native country, which has brutalised people. The black rubber also references a dark skin colour. In this work the rubber evokes ‘dreads’ or hair.